Radio access networks carry traffic between an end user device, e.g., a mobile telephone, a laptop computer, etc., and the core/application network. Congestion occurs when traffic in the network exceeds the engineered radio access network capacity. Illustratively, radio access networks can become congested/overloaded when many end user devices use the access network simultaneously or when a few users with one or more different applications generate a large amount of data. Without radio access network control, the congestion may remain for long periods of time and could result in queuing delay, packet loss or the blocking of new connections. Desired congestion controls allow high priority traffic, e.g., emergency calls, and throttle lower priority traffic.
Disadvantageously, with the popularity of smart phones and the high use of applications that use the Internet in short bursts, data is being used in non-optimal ways for the wireless network, which stresses radio access network and core network resources. Illustratively, a user of a wireless device with one or more existing connections to the network may repeatedly request additional wireless network resources when the radio access network is in an overload condition.